In the last A2K3 panel, entitled The Global Public Sphere: Media and Communication Rights, Seán Ó Siochrú made some striking statements based on his experience building local communication networks in undeveloped areas of LCDs. He states that the global public sphere is currently a myth, and what we have now is elites promoting their self-interest. He criticizes the very notion of the global public sphere – he wants a more dynamic and broader term that reflects the deeper issues involved in bringing about such a global public sphere. He prefers to frame this issue in terms of communication rights. By this he means the right to sek and receive ideas, generate ideas and opinions of one’s own, speaks these ideas, have a right to be heard, and a right to have others listen. These last two rights Ó Siochrú dismisses as trivial but I don’t see that they are. Each creates a demand on others’ time that I don’t see how to effectuate within the framework of respect for individual automony Belkin elucidated in his keynote address and discussed in my recent blog post and on the A2K blog.

Ó Siochrú also makes an interesting point that if we are really interested in facilitating communication and connection between and by people who have little connectivity today, we are best to concentrate on technologies such as the radio, email, mobile phones, the television, or whatever works at the local level. He eschews blogs, and the internet, as the least acessible, least affortable, and the least usable.

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